Tag: lovecraft

It’s October, and at a recent house party a friend of mine was telling me how much he hated Lovecraft. In honor of this sentiment and the creepiest month of the year, I bring to you my shortlist of super amazing Lovecraft-inspired tales. Enjoy!

The Ballad of Black Tom

The Dream-Quest of Vellett Boe

Remember way back at the end of 2016 when I recommended my favorite reads of the year? This lovely feminist novella made the list. It’s a tale involving a quest and dreaming gods, and the bond between a professor and her student.

The Innsmouth Legacy

Perhaps one of the most inventive approaches to Lovecraft’s tales, this series so far includes Winter Tide, Deep Roots, and “The Litany of Earth,” the story that kicked off the whole affair. This is the tale of an alternate history in which systems of authority are the real monsters, not those who return to the deep. Like The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe this is a story with a slower pace and less in the way of gore or violence.

The Borden Dispatches

Reaching the farthest afield, we have a fantastical retelling of the gruesome Lizzie Borden murders of childhood rhyme. The things from beyond are definitely the evil here, and only Lizzie Borden and her ax stand in their way. Check out Maplecroft and Chapelwood for an eerie set of reads. Lots of violence and action in these books, counterbalanced by the writing style and horror-movie tension.

This is for a couple of reasons, the principal of these being that I am white. Because of this, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that my reflections on the novella The Ballad of Black Tom are my own, and come from my whiteness, at least in part. We cannot extricate the parts of our identities, after all. That said, I am also a writer and a writer keenly interested in diverse representation and stories which get to the heart of oppression. The Ballad of Black Tom did both of these things baldly and without pulling any punches. I want to unpack that. And I want to lend my platform to this book, because it is a valuable read, perhaps most especially for white people.

All of that said, there will be spoilers. Stop here if you don’t want those, and scroll to the end for further reading recommendations if you must. You are warned.

If you want to read this book first and come back, I encourage it. It’s a novella, so it took me about three or four hours to chomp through at most. I read fast, but it’s not a terribly serious time commitment if you want to bookmark this page for later.

No, the time commitment is in how much you’ll find yourself thinking about it afterwards.